Voice, video, and data services are currently provided to customer premises over several different network infrastructures and by several different companies. For example, television programming is typically provided to customer premises through one of many private cable television networks or through satellite transmissions received using personal satellite dishes. Voice and other telephony are also communicated to customer premises over a separate infrastructure, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The Internet also includes a separate infrastructure of various fiber optic and other data networks, often accessed from the customer premises through a private cable television network or the PSTN. Each of these network infrastructures has its own unique physical architecture, communication protocols, and other characteristics which are typically incompatible with the architectures, protocols, and characteristics of the other network infrastructures.
On occasion these infrastructures may share some components in order to reach the customer premises, but this typically requires layering systems on top of one another or requires translation between the various systems in order to provide the desired collection of services to the customer premises. For example, data may be communicated to the customer premises using a cable television network, in conjunction with a cable modem. However, to communicate this data along with cable television signals, repackaging and translation are required to fit the data into the cable television network's frequency space. Another example is the use of the PSTN to provide data to the customer premises using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. The inherent incompatibility of traditional telephone and cable television networks with data networks such as the Internet has created many problems for both users and the service providers, preventing service providers from delivering integrated voice, video, and data to customer premises over a single network infrastructure.